1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relate to a system and method for evaluating laser treatment, and more particularly, a system and method for evaluating laser treatment, for converting the attribute of a laser beam and numerically evaluating proficiency of a laser treatment operator by processing data obtained by photographing the converted laser beam so as to use the evaluated data as training data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today it is been about 20 years since Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has first authorized a clinic laser and an aesthetic laser treatment has been used as an example of successful application of a laser in a medical field.
Korean Patent Publication No. 10-1219682 discloses a representative laser irradiation system for such laser treatment.
For example, in the hair removal field, according to recent statistics of American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), about 1.2 million treatments have been done on 2012 only in the USA, which has definitely taken first place with treatment frequency of the total beauty field and has taken second place with men.
Laser hair removal has been popular because of demonstrated superiority thereof compared with conventional hair removal in terms of stability and effectiveness as well as enhanced interest of people on beauty.
Laser hair removal is basically based on a principle of ‘selective photodermolysis’. The principle is based on the fact that follicles and surrounding tissues have different heat absorptivities due to difference in their pigments. Accordingly, even if a predetermined affected area is irradiated with a laser beam without aiming at each follicle, only follicles may be selectively destroyed.
According to a more recent study, the core mechanism of hair removal using light corresponds to a process for transmitting heat generated from follicles to hair stem cells because hair stem cells that are substantially in charge of growth of hair have no pigment and are attached next to follicles. Accordingly, transmission of an appropriate amount of laser energy to an affected area is a very important factor for hair removal.
When accurate selection of laser intensity fails, side effects such as pigment change, blister, or erythema due to the generation of the excessive amount of blood. On the other hand, transmission of the low amount of laser energy may cause problems, and in this case, treatment effect is degraded and hair growth is also facilitated to cause ‘paradoxical hypertrichosis’.
In order to reduce these side effects, a significant amount of research has been conducted to select an optimum laser parameter according to skin color and a position of an affected area.
However, even if appropriate laser intensity is selected, if laser spots are not uniformly distributed, the amounts of laser energies that are actually transmitted to an affected area may be locally different. Frequently, nurses have been entrusted with laser treatment or treatment by half-educated non-practitioners has been prevalently done, and even doctors need to be accustomed to various sizes of new equipment and laser irradiators and various laser parameter settings. Accordingly, in consideration of this, there is high risk due to non-uniform laser transmission.
Accordingly, there is a need to develop simple and effective tools for quantitatively analyzing irradiated laser energy to evaluate proficiency of a laser hair removal operator, but research has not been actively conducted into these tools
Most difficulty in manufacturing this system is visualization of an irradiated laser beam.
A hair removal laser uses infrared rays and does not leave prompt vestigium on an irradiation spot.
Recently, a research group has developed a method for calculation of a duplication and omission degree of transmitted energy by analyzing change in heat at a laser irradiation spot using a thermo-graphic camera. However, there are problems in that the thermo-graphic camera is very expensive for daily use and has difficulty in quantitatively recognizing a degree of generated heat when a laser irradiator with a device for cooling an affected area is used or an outdoor temperature is not adjusted because photograph needs to be performed immediately after treatment.
Although other researchers have proposed a visualization method of a laser beam using sensitive paper and a general camera, they observe only a laser profile in one spot in order to recognize irrational characteristics of a laser irradiator.
Although this method is used to recognize proficiency of laser treatment, additional efforts to digitize sensitive paper are required, and it is difficult to reuse the sensitive paper and thus there is a limit for daily use.
Some laser equipments further include a laser installed therein in the form of a laser pointer next to a laser irradiator and emitting lower-power visible rays such that an operator is capable of estimating a position of a laser irradiation p. However, it is difficult to track a process of transmission of a laser beam of total treatment via this method.